Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Home and Religion
Another Happy Fault

Another Happy Fault

Last updated on: September 19, 2022 at 5:43 pm by Mary Pezzulo

Another Happy Fault 2022-09-19T17:43:32-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

We stayed in Columbus two days longer than I’d expected.

This wasn’t because I wanted to. It was because of a disaster. The Neighborhood Trolley was totaled and undriveable, a story I’ll tell another time. The car already had only a year or so left in it, and Columbus put it to death in spectacular fashion. I couldn’t even sell it for parts because the title to the car was in a drawer back in Steubenville, three hours’ drive away.

I found myself stranded in a city I haven’t lived in for a decade and a half, with no transportation and no idea what to do.

I’d been wanting to make Columbus my home again for longer than I can say, but not like this. I wanted to somehow win the lottery and buy a three-story foursquare on a double lot in Clintonville or a mansion on Schiller Park in German Village. Instead I was staying in a blue cottage in a pretty part of Linden, until the friends I was dog sitting for got back Sunday night, with no plan at all on where I was going to stay after that.

“You have crash landed on an alien planet,” said a friend. “How do you adapt to your new home?”

My friend knows of which she speaks. She is from the United States but ended up living in a terrible part of Mexico with her husband’s family for awhile, and learned to adapt. Now I had to adapt in much easier straits.

The first thing to do was walk the dog.

The family’s adult children were supposed to take over walking the dog twice a day after we left early Friday morning, but we told them not to bother and that we would care for the dog over the whole weekend. She was a medium-sized dog, bouncy, friendly, fond of barking at squirrels. I’ve never had a dog before. I felt like an imposter, a middle-aged lady in conservative clothes walking a pleasant dog I didn’t own through a pleasant neighborhood that wasn’t mine. I wasn’t an astronaut who crash landed on an alien planet, but an alien trying to pass as human.

Other dog walkers gave me a polite, respectful, Midwestern Nice kind of smile and nod as I walked the dog up and down the pleasant street. I wanted to tell them they had it all wrong. I didn’t deserve a nod. I was a fake, a pod person, an invader crash landed from a bad part of Northern Appalachia, someone pretending to be normal.

I wondered, for the ten thousandth time, what I would have been if I hadn’t been Mary Pezzulo. If my family had been an ordinary family. If I’d never heard of the Charismatic Renewal or any other brand of cultish, reactionary Catholicism. If I’d been raised a run-of-the-mill lukewarm liberal Catholic or Episcopalian or going to the Unitarian church over in Beechwold; anything other than the chronically ill, anxious mess who went to Franciscan University in order to give her life in service to a capricious and demanding God, became estranged from her family, and got trapped in a poor neighborhood in a terrible derelict steel mill town for sixteen years.

What if I had never, ever been to the hellish place where the rust belt collides with the Appalachian mountains?

What if I had always been a perfectly normal lady, smiling and nodding at perfectly normal neighbors, walking my dog in a pleasant neighborhood?

When I got back, I got on social media and found messages.

“Do you have enough to eat?” said several friends at once, some I’ve met in Steubenville and some rabble rousing social justice friends from a different part of Columbus. They thought to ask that because they’d been poor too. People who have always had enough to eat don’t usually remember that having enough to eat can be a challenge. I admitted we only had enough groceries to last until our planned Friday departure. Suddenly I had a ride to the store for a few more dinners and somebody else was Doordashing us Wendy’s. Just like the times my friends and I pulled together to take someone else to the store or Doordash them an emergency meal lately.

The friends whose dog it was were also checking in, asking if we had enough of everything, making sure we were comfortable. I’d known these people only casually back when I lived in Columbus, because we went to the same parish, but we became fast friends when we met again years later through the blog and through social media. They’re like family now. They also went through a long, difficult time where they were terribly poor with no way out.

Holly the Witch arranged for the car to be towed to her house, until I could come back to Columbus with the title and sell it for parts. She sat with me several times while I cried uncontrollably and panicked at the prospect of ending up homeless in Columbus, or back in Appalachia with no transportation. She baked Adrienne a gluten free cake as well, and promised to take care of McFluff until we could get him home.

Someone pointed out that I’d crowdfunded for the H family to get a car and gotten them one in a weekend earlier this year. Couldn’t I do that for myself? And I started a gofundme. And people whose names I recognized, people who read the blog, other former Charismatics who relate to what I have to say, started helping.

Two different people in Steubenville offered to give Adrienne rides to soccer and martial arts while we looked for a new used car.

Other people, people who know about cars as I don’t, gave advice about how to get one and not be stuck with a lemon like the Neighborhood Trolley this time.

I got in the neighborhood buy nothing group on Facebook and invited the neighbors to harvest all the ripe tomatoes from my community garden boxes back in Steubenville, so they wouldn’t go to waste.

On Sunday, one new friend gave us a lift to church, a pleasant Columbus church where the priest gave a homily on Mammon not being important. He said we had to live for God through helping one another because the resources we have are given us to share.

And then Adrienne received her second Holy Communion beside me, and everything seemed all right for a time.

And then another friend, someone I met through Holly, drove us all the way back to our house, hours out of her way. We chatted the whole time as if we’d known each other forever. She has PCOS and knows just what it’s like when you’re chronically ill and the doctors don’t know why.

I am back in my house now.

If I had been an ordinary person, somebody other than myself, I might not have known all these other out-of-the-ordinary people.

If nothing out of the ordinary had happened to me– if I had never been an alien but just a normal lady walking a normal dog on a pleasant street– I might not have known how good people can be.

If my life hadn’t been such a disaster, I might not have known so many miraculous rescues.

“O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, that won for us so great a savior,” I keep thinking over and over again.

I’m still in that terrible deconstructing place where I don’t know exactly where God is.

But one of the places He is, is here in the faults and disasters. In the faults and disasters you meet the saints. The saints aren’t the people I thought they would be. They are different and better.

Maybe my life hasn’t been so bad after all.

image via Pixabay

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.

Steel Magnificat operates almost entirely on tips. To tip the author, visit our donate page.

Home and Religion

story

Previous Post

September 14, 2022

On Losing and Finding a Home

Next Post

September 20, 2022 An Irritated Rant on The Little Mermaid

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category abortion Abuse Advent America American Christianity angel angels Annunciation Appalachia apparition apparition chaser apparition chasers apparition culture art art review babies baby baby Jesus Bad Lip Reading bad statue contest bath beauty Bible story blog blogkeeping blood book review Brandon Sanderson breastfeeding bus Catholic catholic conspiracy alarmism Catholic Oppositional Disorder Charismatic Renewal Charlie the Cat chastity Christ Christian idenitity Christianity and Judaism Chronic Illness clean clothing COD piece comedy compassion conscience conspiracy theory conversion cop-on-black violence Crucifixion cry of the poor culture Daesh Daily Saints death death penalty devotional diaconate diaper diapers dirty disability Donald Trump Dorothy Day dream drugs Eastern Catholicism Eastern Christianity education election election update Elsewhere on Patheos empathy environment Fear feminism film review fish flashback fluffy buns food Franciscan University of Steubenville Friendship Room fun Gabriel gardening gospel hair-splitting Heaven hell heresy Hillary Clinton history Holly the Witch Holy Spirit holy war Homeschooling homosexuality horror human dignity humor Icon idol immigrants infection inter-religious dialogue Interpretation of Scripture Islam Jesus Jihad Joseph joy laity and lay vocations lamb dinner laundry lent lgbtq literature love manners Mary Medicine and Science Meditation mercy mess milk misogyny Missouri monasticism monster motherhood mourn with those mourn movies movis music mystery nature neurodiversity New Pro-Life Movement news nonsense nostalgia O antiphons obituary objectification Ohio Valley Ordinary Time ordination Ordo Amoris parable paradox Passover peanut butter personal beliefs pets philosophy Planet Charismatic poetry politics polls poop Pope Francis Pope Leo power in the Church prayer prayer request prayers preferential option for non-violence president presidential election priest primary private revelation pro-life prophecy Public face of Catholicism Pure Flix Q and A race racism random rape rape. sexuality reader's request Reckoners refugee religious trauma ressurrection Right to life Saints saints and celebrations same-sex same-sex marriage satire scandal secular feasts seder Seven Joys Seven Last Words sex sexual ethics sexuality silencing six months skid row slavery social justice Speculative fiction spiritual abuse spoon stain story suffering suffrage suffragette Sunday Gospel temple Tenebrae Responsories Terror the exorcist The Friendship Room The New Pro-Life Movement Things I Learned on the Internet tin cup traffic true story tv review Uncategorized USCCB vice and temptation violence Virtue virtue and vice war Way of the Cross whimsy whole life women's ordination work of mercy Year A

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Which letter wraps up with the reminder, "Let everything be done decently and in order"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Hebrews 1 Timothy James 1 Corinthians